This essay was written by Horace Meister, a young untenured scholar who cannot use his own name for fear of retribution. Read it and judge it by the evidence.

This is what happens when policy is based on ideology, not evidence.

He writes:

The power and reach of the federal Department of Education (DOE) has grown dramatically since 2009. The DOE has used Race to the Top and the controversial granting of waivers from the legal mandates of No Child Left Behind to force states to implement very specific policies. These policies include increasing the number of charter schools, evaluating teachers through value-added measures, and implementing the Common Core Standards and associated assessments. The DOE has also attempted to improve the “lowest-achieving schools” by closing them, turning them over to private operators, or firing the principal and/or the staff. continue reading....

Dr. Havidán Rodríguez, UTRGV Provost, will give the welcoming remarks at
the first Women’s Faculty Network (WFN) meeting on the Brownsville campus.
Moreover, Dr. Rodríguez will discuss the progress towards our consolidation.
Dr. Marie Mora (Vice Provost Fellow for Faculty Affairs at UTPA) will also
provide an overview of what the WFN has accomplished at UTPA from its inception
under the NSF-funded ADVANCE Program. This will be a great opportunity to learn
about the WFN and ADVANCE, and how they will benefit the women faculty at
UTRGV.

Date: November
24th

Time: 10:00
- 11:30

Location: Salon
Esperanza (LHSB 2.604)

Food:
Yes!

The
next WFN meeting at UTPA will be a brunch on Thursday December 4thfrom 10:00-11:30 a.m. Please
mark your calendars!

The
last WFN meeting (October 21st) was with motivational speaker Melanie
Mills. She discussed “Navigating Uncertainty with Ease”. There were
41 women who attended, including 29 tenured/tenure-track women (representing
17% of all T/TT women at UTPA), plus eight Lecturers/Clinical Faculty and
Professional Staff, and four women from UTB.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

The course evaluation period for Fall 2014 is scheduled from Nov. 17 - Dec. 7. The window for submissions has been extended by a week this fall to accommodate students’ availability during the Thanksgiving break. The evaluation period will close at midnight Dec. 7 before finals begin the following day. The deployment will occur with notices through email and on Blackboard to all students who enrolled during the fall term.

Just as a reminder to you, the evaluation process has been standardized across all UT System institutions to include:

·Consistency in instrument format

·Review of students’ responses

·Review of the rate of response by course section

These reviews are conducted by the UT System Administration and the UT System Board of Regents.

The student response rates to course evaluations have declined since 2013 and are now working away from the 100 percent goal established by the University of Texas System through theChancellor’s Framework for Excellence (see attached Excel file for historical response rate summaryavailable by term and department). The number was progressively improving; however, over the last two year period, rates rose from 34 percent (Spring 2013) to 52 percent (Fall 2013) and then regressed back to 36 percent (Summer II 2014). Faculty are seen as a front-line solution to getting students to complete the evaluations because they are in direct contact with the students, affording faculty the ability to emphasize the importance of these evaluations. Students view professors as figures of authority, therefore students are more likely to respond to a professor asking them to submit the course evaluations than an email, Blackboard, or other system message that will likely be overlooked. By not working toward 100 percent participation, the lack of responses fails to create improvements for the students, faculty, and university. In short, professors are capable of helping raise the course evaluation student response rate close to the 100 percent target. The benefit for professors to emphasize the importance of students responding to course evaluations is that there is less of a margin for error in a large, versus small sample rate that could potentially overemphasis extreme responses.

Please make sure students read the instrument carefully as UT System’s scale has changed from the one the institution historically used. For technical questions, please contact Jose Butron at extension 7199. If you have any other questions or concerns, please call Dean Straight at extension 7650 or the OIRPE office directly at extension 8816.

As always, thank you for your cooperation with this important activity.

The following goals are administrative goals that would provide an efficient operation for the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation.

The TLI Department will employ various means of communication (e.g., email, blogs, webpage, etc.) to improve and maintain a high level communication between faculty, administration and others.

The TLI Department will develop a professional development plan that provides a high level of training in curriculum, assessment, and the application of technology to support faculty knowledge and skill development.

The TLI Department will adopt standards for the delivery of online coursework that are based on best practices for online instruction.